Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloween!!!!!

Well, we returned to school following Hurricane Sandy to celebrate Halloween! Truth be told, we were all a little out of sorts this morning, trying to remember where we had left off and figuring out which assignments needed to be finished prior to wrapping up the first marking period on Friday!!

We began our day by visiting the media center. Mrs. Rose and I explained the expectations for the third and fourth slides of the students' Keynote presentations for the community action research presentation. Then the children worked in their small groups to complete those slides.

When we returned to the classroom, during our reading and writing block, the children continued working on their presentations.

One mini lesson that did take place involved the talking feature of the iPad. I showed the students how to have the iPad read what they wrote back to them so they could decide whether their writing "makes sense". The children were instructed to use this feature to decide whether or not they needed to revise and edit the text within their presentation.

In math today we spent a lot of time using our warm up (picture above) to determine the operation needed to solve word problems. Mrs. Head shared her strategy for drawing the picture FIRST and then determining whether the answer involved counting the entire picture (multiplication) or just one group (division). I reviewed the idea that p x p=w and w divided by p = p; where p stands for part and w stands for whole. Then I TOLD the class that the unknown (what we are looking for) is always in the question part of the word problem. They should read the question and decide if the unknown is a part or the whole. If the unknown is a part, then they should use division. If the unknown is the whole, they use multiplication.

After that, Mrs. Head shared an educreations lesson that has songs to help students memorize the multiplication facts. She also gave the children a packet that has the words to the songs. They learned HOW to use these songs to help them memorize and solve multiplication problems. The students MUST memorize their multiplication basic facts...this is a great tool to help!

For homework the children are supposed to practice two of the songs using this blog or the song sheet packet.

Following lunch outdoor recess we celebrated Halloween with a parade and party. Thanks to all of the wonderful parents who planned and executed our FABULOUS party!! Enjoy the pictures below!!